Civil Rights in Labor-Management Relations: A Management Viewpoint

Abstract

HE most striking evidence of the vitality and driving force of the American concept of civil liberty is found at mid-twentieth century in the day-by-day defining and institutionalizing of the labor-management relationship. This fact unfortunately is partially obscured by the uncertainties and problems incident to the backwash of a great war and preoccupation with the dual task of mobilizing for another war while simultaneously seeking an acceptable formula for its avoidance. Notwithstanding these burdens, the American people are hammering out workable definitions of economic rights and obligations within the framework of constitutional and judicial concepts formulated for the establishment and fostering of their political democracy. Traditional concepts such as liberty, equality, and fraternity are definable, and are being defined, in terms that permeate the more personal and intimate phases of the life of the individual -the right to work, rights in a particular job, the right to employ others, and the obligations attaching to these and similar rights. Freedom of speech is broadened to protect in part the right to exert economic pressure upon an employer by so-called lawful picketing. The concept of freedom of assemblage becomes sufficiently elastic to embrace the momentary or temporary deprivation of the use by an employer of his property in order that other individuals, his employees, may meet on such property outside working hours to plan and organize their opposing interests better. It is necessary to keep constantly in the forefront of our thinking this cardinal fact of contemporary America. Though it be quite obvious that forces at work in our society are impelling us into an industrial system more responsive to democratic tenets, the by-products normally incident to such social change seem to be less obvious. Thus, in labor-management relations two words probably sum up the major reaction of most individuals to events in this field--conflict and confusion. It is popular to decry labor-management conflict and to call for a rapprochement on some basis or other, never quite clearly defined or formulated by the seekers of light and peace. The inference is, of course, that this conflict is nnecessary and socially undesirable. The plain fact is, however, that labormanagement conflict is inevitable, and, in mid-twentieth-century America, a socially constructive force. It is the interaction of aggressive labor and management groups within the moderating influence of the American social structure that is producing revised definitions of the rights and obligations of the individual.